LinkedIn inked out: Twitter cuts off jabberhose to suits

Twitter has tightened the screws on its application programming interface (API), cutting dead syndication with LinkedIn and promising a more "consistent" network for its users.

The micro-blogging outfit is slowly starting to lock out third-party developers now that it has banked 100 million users. It is no longer interested in sharing 140-character witterings via its API quite so freely as it once did.

LinkedIn offered this muted response to Twitter's vanishing act from the social-network-for-suits. It said in a blog post:

Consistent with Twitter’s evolving platform efforts, Tweets will no longer be displayed on LinkedIn starting later today. We know many of you value Twitter as an additional way to broadcast professional content beyond your LinkedIn connections. Moving forward, you will still be able to share your updates with your Twitter audience by posting them on LinkedIn.

Twitter's API deal with LinkedIn had been in place since 2009, allowing subscribers to the sites to share conversations across both platforms.

But the micro-blogging site is now taking more control of what third-party developers can and can't do with its fire hose of chatter.

"We’ve already begun to more thoroughly enforce our Developer Rules of the Road with partners, for example with branding, and in the coming weeks, we will be introducing stricter guidelines around how the Twitter API is used," said the company's group product manager Michael Sippey on Friday. His LinkedIn profile is here. ®